Carousel: Too Needy To Love, Faux-Feminist Men, And Tumblr Witches

Dear God, it’s August. Let’s not talk about it. I’m desperately clinging to the last few days of summer, despite the persistent thunderstorms circling NYC for the next week!

Here are some of the craziest, weirdest, most interesting, and thought-provoking pieces I’ve found over the last month or so. Enjoy!

Daddies, “Dates,” and the Girlfriend Experience: Welcome to the New Prostitution Economy. A growing number of young people are selling their bodies online to pay student loans, make the rent, or afford designer labels. Is it just an unorthodox way to make ends meet or a new kind of exploitation? Nancy Jo Sales investigates.

Decide for yourself instead. Pay attention to how it feels the moment you resolve to address and soothe these feelings of self-doubt and distress on your own. Learn how to tell yourself that you are good and worthy. You are worthy even on your worst days. Learn to believe in the value of caring a whole hell of a lot. Learn to enjoy being your own savior. Learn to ask yourself tough questions, and learn to answer them in reassuring ways.

A feminist man makes space for women to speak and to hold positions of power, even when that means stepping back from his own power. He defends and supports women when they need it, especially in spaces where a man’s voice holds more weight than a woman’s (which, let’s face it, is most spaces). He listens to and believes women, instead of interrupting or interrogating us, when we tell him our experiences and our concerns. He advocates feminism not just to women, but to men too, because he recognizes it’s not about winning points, it’s about making change. He unlearns the defensiveness that naturally comes up when we confront our own privilege, and then uses that privilege to do good in the world.

The Emotional Intelligence Toolkit: This (free!) program is rooted in social and emotional brain science that engages the emotional brain and heart, as well as the reasoning mind. Its purpose is to teach you how to control troublesome thoughts, manage difficult emotions, have better relationships, and follow through on positive intentions.

The emotional landscape that occurs when you are with your partner, is a process called emotional contagion. The term refers to the well documented fact that emotions can be likened to a social virus in that they spread from one person to another. Put another way, you can literally catch your partner’s anger, anxiety and depression, or similarly, you can mood infect your partner with confidence and enthusiasm.

Makeup Magic: Beauty as Ritual, Empowerment, and Reclamation. This patriarchal standard for how people should present themselves creates the opportunity to use beauty as a tool to empower yourself and others, reclaiming something that has long been a method of oppression. This can go beyond the physical act of applying makeup, nail polish, or perfumes, and become a ritualistic practice, weaving magic into maquillage.

“Sometimes I look in the mirror, feel my shoulders slump, and am disappointed with what I see,” Manson says. “And I have imaginary voices about what people might say about me having pink hair at 50. But I’m at that point where I don’t give a fuck if you think it’s appropriate or not. Go fuck yourself and be boring! I want to be free to explore the person I want to be. … Sure, I’ll be compared to Taylor Swift or Sky Ferreira. I get that. But age is information. Age is empowerment. I’m tired of being told I must infantilize myself and pretend I’m younger than I am. I’m 50, and I have lived an incredible life.”

Get the epidural. It’s interesting that no one cares very much about women doing anything “naturally” until it involves their being in excruciating pain. No one ever asks a man if he’s having a “natural root canal.” No one ever asks if a man is having a “natural vasectomy.”

Do you ever feel like your intimate relationships are basically like being in emotional bootcamp? If so, you’re not the only one. Check out Alexandra’s piece on relationships as a path to enlightenment.